Professor Martens' Departure

Jaan Kross

It is 1909, and Professor Friedrich Fromhold Martens is catching the
train from his home town of Pärnu to St Petersburg. As he travels his
mind wanders back over his life: over his rise from poor provincial
student to Privy Councillor; over his career as an expert on
international law, a drafter of treaties, author of learned tomes, and
near recipient of the Nobel peace prize; over his marriage and his love
affairs; and over his half-conviction that he is a reincarnation of
German lawyer and diplomat Georg Friedrich von Martens. These meanders
are revealing of both his failings and his qualities: even as he
confesses his infidelities, he reveals the depth of his love for his
wife; even as he justifies to himself his hypocrisies in the service of
the state, his basic honesty and sense of justice are made apparent.
The result is a complex, many-layered, and moving portrait of a man at
the end of his life, a portrait almost elegiac in its effect.

With its formal elegance, skillful handling of stream of consciousness,
and general narrative verve, Professor Martens' Departure impressed
me even more than the other Kross works I have read. The unfortunate
thing is that I will have to wait for more to be translated.